I see in this version that we can only take delivery of about 1 aircraft per month. Given you need approx 10 aircraft per fleet to really make enough money to cover the fixed costs, you are saying we have to lose money on each fleet type for 6-12 months first? Surely the real world does not work like this? Surely better for some production lists to fill up, and slow players to choose a different type, but at least take delivery of 1 aircraft per week?

This delivery schedule we have means players are encouraged to start multiple fleets in order to take enough deliveries per month, which just makes the situation worse....

While I see where you're coming from, we're certainly not seeing a huge amount of bankruptcies, plenty of airlines are thriving, so I think it's a rather unfounded basis really.

You only need a large amount of aircraft to cover the fixed costs once you start getting into the 4th and 5th or more fleet types. The first 2 or 3 have very minimal penalties for operating additional models and minimal upfront overhead -- the total commonality costs to put the first F28 into my fleet for example was a mere $25K/week. You're easily able to have consistent growth even while operating just a single model of a 2nd or 3rd model, it's the later new models that can kill ya.

It's all part of a strategy of slowing growth as well as making things more realistic and frankly I find it much more interesting and fun than the old way. And rather than causing so many bankruptcies, this is drawing out the truly competitive phase of the game (as opposed to later where everyone's got so much money it's not really "competition" anymore), creating much more diversity at major airports than there usually is at this point in the game where it's getting down to 1, perhaps 2 prolific carriers at each, as one has usually already dominated the market and worked on wiping out the competition.

The pace of deliveries along with lack of multiple legs has kept a much more even pace of development amongst competitors, forces a much more realistic longer-term outlook (rather than world domination in 12 months), and made the early decisions of competition vs open route much more important than in game's past, and is all in all shaping up to make a more interesting game than we've seen before.

If I were to make any suggestion at all, it'd be to continue this trend of slowing growth by targeting the play strategy of the top few percentage of players that are able to secure extremely large sums of money early on and game the system into even larger loans thereby securing exorbitantly large aircraft orders. We've already hit the strategy of "fly-anything-you-can" with the exponential penalties on fleet types (but it needs even more work), now we just need more work on going after long-haul revenue and costs similar to how the domestic game got a LOT more interesting with the red-eye demand penalties.

-F28s are cheap to be fair. -Realistic would equate to one delivery per week - I would refer you to what some European LCCs are achieving in the real world. -If not bankruptcies, it has slowed the game to a crawl as cash gets sunk for such a long period of time before delivery-actually I think the whole setup (outside deliveries) is pretty real, esp the fleet fixed costs. My suggestion would be to whack up the fleet fixed costs (perhaps double them), but allow for faster deliveries. That way players would focus on fewer types, but would still make good money provided they achieved scale quickly. I work in the airline business, and can tell you that the real fixed costs are WAY above what is here in the game-My other suggestion would be to find a way to bid against other players for deliveries, and in the second hand market... Let the market find the acft price-The "fly everything you can" strategy is a function of starting the game with 8 airlines in one airport, with limited slots, and all with the same starting cash. I see this is now limited to 6 airlines/airport going forwards. If you limit this further to 3 (much more realistic), then airlines would not have to make such a rapid expansion to avoid being slot constrained later in the game.

Yes this V1.2 thingy is a lot harder.... but I like it. Even with good fleet commonality it is hard to make a decent profit. My airline has a -4 million bank account and I concider myself a good manager when I look at other airlines having a -30 to -35 million company value...

The "fly everything you can" strategy is a function of starting the game with 8 airlines in one airport, with limited slots, and all with the same starting cash. I see this is now limited to 6 airlines/airport going forwards. If you limit this further to 3 (much more realistic), then airlines would not have to make such a rapid expansion to avoid being slot constrained later in the game.

Sorry, but If you start your airline in the top 40 airports in the world I call you nutts. You know LHR, AMS, JFK etc. will be busey... so why base there in the first place? Ever noticed the top 10 airlines didn't operated from the top 20 airports? I did.

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GDK

Yes this V1.2 thingy is a lot harder.... but I like it. Even with good fleet commonality it is hard to make a decent profit. My airline has a -4 million bank account and I concider myself a good manager when I look at other airlines having a -30 to -35 million company value...

Harder... yes. But better.

Everyone taking loan to order new planes and get the launch customer discount. I got -38m but failed to grab the launch discount...

blaker1984

I think the delivery pace is proper for the more popular planes. It makes sense that it would awhile to build up a fleet of A320's since everyone else wants a fleet of A320's for example. However I disagree with the notion that unpopular planes should be docked the 1 a month delivery as that is definitely not realistic. Case and point is the 747 line, the few airlines ordering those planes should not be docked the time gap when huge blocks of open delivery slots are available to you. This goes the same for the more popular planes however gaps such as the 747 line are a little more rarer.

Ideas of speeding up the deliveries for the sack of game speed doesnt work, and altering the used market for faster output also is something I wouldnt like. I feel the used market is good, research your types on the stats page and go shopping.

However for the new fleet market, delivery slots should be based on a 3 week rotation per player, but if a slot is open in the near future I feel a bid system should be in place for the plane. For example if the game date is March 31, and there is four A320 slots available April 24-30. The game should close the month of April for official new aircraft orders. Now the system begins a slot bid of some type. Now I have not figured what costs it should be. But if the last day of the month is bid for the following month it gives a common day to jump in and spend money. Now the only real thing I can think of is that players with orders already confirmed as in 6 months and longer with this fleet type can bid in order to move up deliveries at an extra cost.

For common planes mid game the likelyhood of large numbers of slots available is slim, however uncommon aircraft this allows owners whos orders are spread far and wide to narrow things down a bit, and if they are the only bidder then they have nothing to lose. This would help push planes quicker, fill actual production slots with orders and ease the used market by taking away airlines who need "filler" planes.

Anyways enough blabbing about it, idea is open for debate and discussion, just a thought on it since in real life slot delieveries are always moved around my airline has had its 777 slots moved twice due to exchange and delayed orders.

For common planes mid game the likelyhood of large numbers of slots available is slim, however uncommon aircraft this allows owners whos orders are spread far and wide to narrow things down a bit, and if they are the only bidder then they have nothing to lose. This would help push planes quicker, fill actual production slots with orders and ease the used market by taking away airlines who need "filler" planes.

If the plane really is "uncommon" and you are the only (or one of the few) orderer of the plane type, if anything, it makes even more sense that you'll have to wait a while between deliveries.

If a factory only has 20 orders for a plane, they're not going to produce them all at once. They're going to spread them out as much as they possibly can to stay working. They're not going to hurry up, make your order, then lay off their workers. Not to mention you wouldn't necessarily want that as an airline anyways because as soon as they run out of orders, they now stop making that plane forever. It's in your interest to keep that factory in orders for an extended period if you really do want an "uncommon" plane.

The only "problem" with the system now is that it gives you these slots that make you think you're getting screwed because you see 6 empty slots between all of your deliveries. In reality, there'd be no "slots" there at all, they'd simply work on your next plane for that entire time with a whole lot less guys. Sami just didn't, and for good reason, have the manufacturing capacity of a line reduce that quickly, so that when there's no orders they drop to only making 1/month and instead it stays at a higher figure to make it at least viable for others to place orders.

I think the delivery pace is proper for the more popular planes. It makes sense that it would awhile to build up a fleet of A320's since everyone else wants a fleet of A320's for example. ... Ideas of speeding up the deliveries for the sack of game speed doesnt work, and altering the used market for faster output also is something I wouldnt like. I feel the used market is good, research your types on the stats page and go shopping.

I agree with Blake on the new plane market, but I have to say the used aircraft market is way too empty, and I'm not seeing it match either game 'economic conditions' or real world conditions. As I write this (8:36AM CEST) there is not a single 737 of any variety in the used market store. However, the global statistics lists 9 732As, 46 733s, and 122 734s as 'for sale or in storage'.

So why aren't we seeing these in the market place? The global stats makes sense and match real world conditions. If I had a couple of million laying around and a lot of paperwork filled out, I could go down the road and get a 737 of any variety on lease - there is ALWAYS a 737 for lease somewhere in the world. LOL

So I can totally feel Carris frustration. It gets worse. After hours of stalking the used aircraft market (from the office, from my iPhone while on the metro, etc) and checking the news for bankruptcies hoping that they're equipment would be cycled back into the pool; I finally had to go with another fleet type just to make sure I didn't get locked out of all the slots at my base (its a pretty competitive base but not a top 20 airport) and now even that type is drying up.

Leave the new aircraft market alone, but we need some changes to the used AC market.

I agree with Blake on the new plane market, but I have to say the used aircraft market is way too empty, and I'm not seeing it match either game 'economic conditions' or real world conditions. As I write this (8:36AM CEST) there is not a single 737 of any variety in the used market store. However, the global statistics lists 9 732As, 46 733s, and 122 734s as 'for sale or in storage'.

So why aren't we seeing these in the market place?

Because, if they were all released on the market at once, they'd be gone in days and anyone starting a game after about the 3rd day would be completely unable to start an airline at all and every last one of them would go to those airlines that know how to exploit the financial system early on. At least now everyone has an equal chance of getting a decent plane, they'd have zero possibility if they were all gone, meanwhile the large airlines would get infinitely larger, able to buy dozens off the Used market before other lesser-experienced players could get 1 -- that's precisely what used to happen prior to these changes, which is why things like the rationing of aircraft and the purchase limits were integrated.

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If I had a couple of million laying around and a lot of paperwork filled out, I could go down the road and get a 737 of any variety on lease - there is ALWAYS a 737 for lease somewhere in the world. LOL

Real-Life doesn't have 550 airlines trying to supply world demand, from scratch, in a matter of weeks either. If there were thousands of un-/under-served routes in real-life you can be sure there wouldn't "ALWAYS" be a 737 around somewhere in the world to lease because, like here, they'd get swooped up in seconds.

Okay Sig, I take your point on the rationing. However, I still think it's throttled back growth of early starters a little too much. Even if you are, like me, inclined to not try and crush for crushing's sake right off the bat and dump seats on routes just to hold the slots [btw...Sami, can you please check YYZ to ORD; you'll find it interesting ] the throttling does kind of limit your ability to compete effectively, especially if you had a game plan to implement.

Of course, be flexible change and adapt (I totally have). I don't think Early Starters should have an advantage for getting in day 1 (god forbid I go bankrupt and have to start again or something) but I think the rationing the way its set up goes beyond equalizing and acts more as a handicap to those who started early - experienced, moderate, and newby alike.

And I was being facetious about walking down the street and getting a 737, lol. Though, as of May 3, there are about 169 available for immediate or almost immediate lease

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Filippo

i don't think it's really realistic as a 717 is considered a large aircraft so you can only receive one a month, but in reality you could even be delivered 4 in a month. For example, for those of you who read AirlinerWorld, you will notice that it's some time that American Airlines receive 4 737-800 a month, whilst in the game you could only get one. Realistic?

Also, Qatar Airways is receiving 2 777s per month whilst in the game you could only have one. Realistic?

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DudeMcDude

With regard to the used a/c availability and how frustrating it is, let's remember one thing... we're all facing this issue. If Sami changes it so there are more a/c available then they'll quickly go too I'm sure we're all waiting for aircraft to come on.

This is a long term game so that fact it is a slow start makes it interesting.... for longer. I'm amazed to see how some airlines are doing so well and really interested in how they've achieved it.

Sami... as per previous posts... the game has started.... don't change a thing!

The aircraft ordering systems, both new and used, have been updated in every version so far. There are no plans to work on those features in the near future, apart from some minor tuning and features related to founding a new airline.

(oh and next person stating again this "realistic" claim gets a special admin's badge of disapproval.. getting a bit tired on those arguments on "realism" without ANY facts or understanding of the "larger concept" on how the simworld starts, I think I mentioned this elsewhere too)

(oh and next person stating again this "realistic" claim gets a special admin's badge of disapproval.. getting a bit tired on those arguments on "realism" without ANY facts or understanding of the "larger concept" on how the simworld starts, I think I mentioned this elsewhere too)

I'm temped to use the 'r' word again just to see what it'd look like. I yield, I yield...lol -

As my cashflow grows, this slower delivery feature means I am going to buy every decent aircraft across 10 different production lines and then sell/lease 5 lines out for as much money as I can. Because I cannot deploy my capital fast enough in any other way. So I am going to try to hog as many production lines as possible, and over charge people as much as possible because they cant get the planes any other way. And its the only thing I can do with my profits...

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blaker1984

For the used market the Dev.Team got it down pretty good, you have to remember that in order for a used plane to be available it has to be produced first, secondly and commonly used by someone then tossed on the market. The team has done great in terms of aicraft availability for the time the game is in. Alot of companies in the 90's are still running 737-300-500's and as an example yet have dumped a good number on the market hence the added number of 737-200's, 727's etc which were being replaced at this time. In a couple years "game time" you will see the flood of middle aged 737's, early A320 family etc etc. Today post apocalyptic recession tons of aircraft would be available for order from storage etc, but in the late 90's during a strong economy pre-tech boom fleets are strong along with orders etc.

To Sigma agreed on a company extending production time in order to save jobs, keep in business etc and your method of thinking does make sense. I still say the method of used/new is pretty darn good. Keep up the good work though thats for sure been in many games and each additional mod makes it better for sure.

As for the realism thing.. some have valid points some many not.. one thing for us all to consider is that total realism is probably not possible. The subtle issues of new/used aircraft ordering etc will take years of upgrades yet to come to fine tune. Try modeling airlines who exchange slots, or companies who delay slot times due to finances, or accelerate etc etc its alot to take in, but to simulate could be trouble. So lets pat these boys on the back for doing the amazing job so far that they have done. We can offer opinions both experienced or not, lets not forget many players are not in industry while some of us are.